The world was boiling.
Now, for Waterproof, Louisiana – a town which was anything but waterproof – the summer heat rolled over the valley and made the very ground bubble and steam, casting the whole town in a hazy fog that made its occupants want to cram inside their houses and curse as they tried to fix the ancient cooling system.
But I dared to take my chances in the thick air. Moving down the street, the skin between my legs rubbed together. My feet met tangible resistance, like molasses, making a mockery of my body as if middle school did not degrade me enough already. People peered through half-closed shutters with a distasteful sensation in their mouths. Any drivers crawling down the cracked, narrow pavement had to squint again as if they were unsure if I, a strange figure, was more than a heat-induced hallucination. The road was about the only paved one in the entire county, a concentrated spot where all the dust and rubble gathered from the fading community. The whole town seemed paper thin, like fading ink on a page set in the sun. All the color seeped from the image, replaced with crinkling institutions and paper people. There was no depth, no interplay of light and shadows, and simply no color. Waterproof, Louisiana might not have been able to seal out the liquid, but it certainly sealed out any life or vibrant hue.
I desired color.
I had five dollars in my pocket. It was not enough to purchase the supplies I needed to hunt down the vibrancy I craved, so I slipped a couple pencils in my pocket and walked out of the general store with a particular ache in my chest. I did not like to steal, but I witnessed boys my age do it with such ease that I convinced myself it was an expectation, if not a custom – a necessity. I wasn’t supposed to be outside, anyway.
Staying with my great grandmother in a crusty apartment at the edge of town with barely enough cash to make the toilets flush, I did not have the luxury of colored pencils. Besides, I figured I could reap a small amount of profit without my grandmother dragging me to the confession box and making me list my sins to that expressionless figure upon the cross.
That was my problem with the town. The paper people knelt in church rambling off all they wanted God to do for them, but they never considered they authored their own demise. These paper people were the final chords of a song left to fade out into white noise until the heavenly listener was once again blessed with unearthly silence.
But now the silence was clamoring. It rung in my ears like the static of a television. A deep chord struck within me. I knew a melody should be playing, but I did not know how to sing the first note. So as I continued down the solitary path, I whistled an unknown tune, praying for the color that evaporated from the ground beneath my feet to return. Then I could capture its shade, at least momentarily, and suspend it in time to prevent an inevitable demise.
I knew that the only place where vibrancy could be found required me to trespass on hallow ground where the only song was the moans of the dead. The only color was the gold tint of the family gravestone. The ground seemed to boil and bubble beneath my feet as I approached the rusted iron gate on the side of the small white chapel situated right at the edge of town. It swung open with some difficultly, as if it had not been opened in quite some time. Or perhaps, a ghostly force was pushing against it from the other side, forbidding the living from trespassing upon the dead’s drowning dreams.
Steam rolled from the ground as I took a step, foot sinking into the muck as if an undead hand had gripped my ankle and wanted to drag me down into my own undug grave. The place stank of a bitterness difficult to identify, something like the rotting of plants as they baked in the heat. The air was stale and thick, as if muted souls could cloud the viscosity of the atmosphere.
I reached into my pocket and drew out another item: a single magnolia. That is what I had spent my meager allowance on. Not my pencils, no, but a stupid flower. I did not know why I even bought it in the first place. I did not think the family entombed here deserved to be commemorated as they had left my siblings and I with virtually nothing to claim as our own besides hunger. At least the constant crawl of my stomach was a reminder that I, unlike the souls around me, still had a beating heart. How much longer my tin can of a heart could keep on ticking, well, I was unsure. My parents shipped me off for the summer before I could take ninth grade biology and find out.
Yet I found myself kneeling next to that solitary tombstone, the cracked marble shimmering in the intense sunlight. I closed my eyes, trying to remember any inkling of my family history. I was named after the woman entombed here for a reason. There was a hint of a smile, a warm light in bright eyes, and the smell of magnolias. The bittersweet stench of rotting magnolias stained my memory. The smell overwhelmed my senses every time I closed my eyes, during those few fleeting moments suspended between conscious and unconscious thought.
The stench burned my nose now. I twisted the stem of the flower and placed it besides a dead bouquet of those same ivory flowers, shriveled and sunk at the base of the tombstone. The color was instantly sucked from the magnolia. It seemed particularly bland, especially compared to the glint of the marble – the only glimpse of vibrancy in this fading town.
Gold was a terribly peculiar color. It was not a color, not really. Its shine distracted the eye and deceived the brain into thinking that what it was seeing was truly alive with vibrancy. Gold could not satisfy my starving mind. Gold, the shade of avarice, could not fulfill greedy eyes, parched lips, and a bleeding tongue.
But then again, neither could the pencils that jingled in my pocket.
I slowly slid the pencils out, rolling a muted red shade between my fingers. However, as I put the pencil to page, it drew out bold, heavy strokes – the kind of reckless bleeding I was craving. I coveted the finality of freedom, now huddled under the shadow of the tombstone where no one else could consume my color, and it could be entirely my own. I could construct entire citadels within the few square inches of my mind and transport myself far away from my problems, all wrapped up in a crumpling, little package called Waterproof.
Two circles first, overlapped by a curved cross. From their intersection brought forth a pudgy nose, jagged cheeks cradling shadows, a thin, papery smile, and uneven, expressionless eyes. Those eyes – the empty orbs in which I could peer only a shackled soul. I tore the paper out. The process began again, my hand digging into the paper as a I tried to drag every drop of blackened blood from the pencil. However, when I set the page back, those gaunt eyes meet mine, the same eyes I saw when I arrived at the apartment later that day. I hated those eyes, once thinking them to be my grandmother, the preacher, or anyone else in this godforsaken town.
Only now I realize they belonged to the gaze in the mirror.
And so, I stand at the tombstone now, years later. Waterproof has lived up to its name, yet again, as rain pours down in patchy sheets. It rolls off the mud, long oversaturated, and gathers in puddles that glean with whispers or memories and reflections of the dying heavens. And when it finally seeps into the ground, it burns, the wafting smell of rot and decay fuming up from the earth as if the cleansing tide had finally washed away this dying town. A death stain.
My parents move in front of me, mother wiping away fake tears and father with nose downturned in a black, leather-bound book of prayers. I hold the umbrella, hand pinned down to my side as I carry the same shackle, like a ball and chain dragging behind me with every molasses step. It is never my choice to come here, but the darkness called. It was never my choice at all. The only freedom I ever gleaned was in those passing moments, under the shadow of a church steeple or the shadow of my parents’ eye, shrouded away in a little universe where I could be faced with the terrifying realization of my own agency.
I can see better in the dark. But I have a claim to darkness, something that I can call my own. Born into it, growing up in it, and now chasing shadows across the cracked pavement as I stride towards the front of the church, jumping from one square of concrete to another like a game of hopscotch to distract my mind from my own shadow. I once ran from that patch of darkness that followed me wherever I went. My shadow did not scare me, but it came to represent something darker– an invisible burden I could never catch sight of but only feel it pressing down upon my shoulders.
I once called it a curse, blamed it on some supernatural being, only now realizing that the shackles came from within.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
— Sylvia Plath, “Tulips”
I awaken to the familiar embrace of deathless cold. The sensation sends pinpricks throughout my body, causing my fingers to ache and twitch as they corporealize. At first, the feeling can barely stir my slumber. I want to remain bodiless, emotionless, without form nor function. To float in my little infinity, suspended between conscious and unconscious thought. I envy the precipice of existence, so close to achieving the invasive peacefulness of imperception. My eyelashes flutter, nose scrunching as I struggle to keep my eyes shut.
Stupid pupil, I curse. It wants to take everything in.
And so, my eyes are bombarded with eager sensations, darting violently across the dim outskirts of perceivable vision. A hazy mist rolls over the dying grass. The collections of dew curl up and release, sending plumes and wisps of smoky haze across the field in front of me. The fog moves with such density that it casts shadows upon itself, creating the illusion of movement or vibrancy inside the dull, dark mass. I used to envision shapes within those clouds, imagining the precise manner in which my mother’s lips would curl when she smiled. Or perhaps the lines at the corners of her eyes, the folds of skin that whispered and hinted at her life. Other times, I saw my husband’s hands, the bulge of veins and growing dark spots across his skin with age. My baby’s bonnet had always been a particularly proud shape of mine, as my hands had been those that fashioned the lace trimming and ensured every thread in place to cradle the head.
However, as I face the fog once again, those shapes are lost to time. The mist’s ragged breathing and unfurling only brings forth angry, disillusioned attempts to construct that which only life can covet. So I admire the shadows, the way they danced across the cobblestone pathway adjacent to me. They snake through the rivets between stone like a dam burst, sending dark, churning liquid to pervade every crack. The shadow of the steeple looms in the distance, a familiar angle that traverses the field every day, blocking out the sun or view of the sky as it dangles precisely between me and the heavy overhang of Spanish moss and cypress trees. Those trees with their jagged hands leech out all the light, reaching out with greedy claws bent with the same blue hue of rigor mortis. To hide their bony extensions, they lurk with moss draped across their joints, disguising their rot with the translucent silvery spindles of a funeral pyre.
I find myself at the edges of the field, my legs moving mechanically as I approach the barrier I can never cross. The rugged spires of the wrought iron fence rise above me, their ends bristling like spears, the weapons of invisible guardians that confine me here. One hand outstretched, I grip the poles, feeling the cold metal sizzle and sink into my palms. My arms instinctively jolt back. Blinking, I reach for the weapons again. What a thrill – my fingertips instead of the iron kettle, plunged straight into the virulent flames beyond my prison cell.
A loud, sonorous laugh escapes my lips, one that echoes through the valley and peers through the cypress trees’ leaves, bouncing back to me. The ravens in their nests above stir, shrieking wildly as they fly upward, leaving behind the shadows of those beady black eyes and the flurry of dark feathers. I instantly slap a hand over my mouth. I had forgotten the sound of my own voice, the agency of drawing my lips together to speak or squawk, stirring the only signs of life from their resting place. Oh, how I miss the clattering, ugly chords of my own laughter.
Now, the silence is clamoring. It rattles my ears, like the static of a television. A deep chord strikes within me. I know a melody should be playing, but I do not know how to sing the first note. So I continue back down the cobblestone path, retreating to the shadows of the church steeple. The darkness rises again, like the tide of a riverbed. The liquid churns around my waist, pulling me down under its surface, dragging me along like a pebble accustomed to a still pond. No sound now, only my jaw unhinged and desperately wailing, crying, screaming for a listener. I do not want to embrace the darkness, not quite yet. Memory revives slowly. The longer I can escape the shadowy embrace, the more I can drudge from the black water of my mind.
My hands materialize around the jagged edge of a gravestone, an anchor against the viscous fluid that threatens to suck me back down to unconscious thought. Dragging myself upward, I gasp, an unfamiliar sensation, as my lungs relinquish no oxygen and my body long since capable of perceiving any pain. My stupid pupils – finally, their eagerness useful – lock onto my mother’s name. The tide extinguishes, and I drop to my knees over the small plot where she is buried. Burnt fingertips tracing the smoothened stone, I scrape across the faded name over and over again until I can remember her face, the shape of her stubby nose, the deep-set compassion in her eye, the kind of compassion that only comes from loss.
Born here, died here, she was the one who prevented my escape. Her death had entombed me here along with her, unknowingly, unwillingly, long before I could comprehend the inevitability of my own demise. I remember it now, a barrier bursting in my mind as I am flooded with overwhelming emotion. My head lowers, mouth pursed to let out an incomprehensible, inhuman cry. I am not mourning my mother. I am mourning my loss. It was the day this tombstone was made that I tore up my tickets, too overwhelmed with grief and too burdened with the responsibility of family to ever work up the courage to make a decision that would benefit entirely – singularly myself.
And so on that day, I died, too. I am nobody. I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and day clothes to my sisters, my history to the newspaper obituary, and my body to the same mortician who had prepared my mother’s for burial. I want nothing more than for these cursed eyelids to be sewn shut, forcing my ever-eager pupils to peer forever into the darkness instead of compelling my revival, cursed to relive my loss once again, eternally.
However, a different kind of shadow creeps across me as I kneel, hopeless. This one belonged to a colorful creature, one whose light only managed to suck what little hue remained among my mother’s cradle. The girl paces in front of the grave marker, a bright crimson pencil stuck between her uneven teeth. Sweat rolls down her skin, gathering in little pockets or crevices across her blotchy red skin. She dresses in clothes too big for her, gathering fabric in awkward places and attempting to cover the stubborn fat that had not left her cheeks. It was difficult to place her age, as time is but a stranger to me. This creature still spends her breath trying to conquer time.
Her battle is evident by the way she fidgets with her hands, rolling those ruby red lips around that pencil. Its hue blinding, the pencil spreads that virulence across her face, the rush of blood across her cheeks enamoring, enchanting – how I yearn to feel the thrill of an uncooperative body once more! So as she finally collapses at the base of my mother’s tombstone, I eagerly peer over. Fingers sliding through her hair, I desperately try to envision the sensation. To feel the course fibers across my skin, suddenly caught and yanked back by the flyaway strands and entanglements.
She remains unmoved, rolling that violent plume between her fingertips with a bitter satisfaction upon her stained lips. Crimson, the shade of passion and avarice, cannot fulfill her greedy eyes, parched lips, and bleeding tongue. Her eyes dart across the page in her lap, moving with such intensity, I could nearly imagine the citadels and spires she carves behind those eyes. My heart, unmoved, rocks in its bony prison as the girl put the pencil to page, drawing out bold, heavy strokes – the kind of reckless bleeding we both crave.
I covet the finality of inexistence, now where no one else could consume the color – the lifeblood dripping from those pages. Two circles first, overlapped by a curved cross. From their intersection springs forth a pudgy nose, jagged cheeks cradling shadows, a thin, papery smile, and uneven, expressionless eyes. Those eyes – the empty orbs in which I can peer only a shackled soul.
The girl tears the paper out. The process begins again, her hand digging into the paper as she tried to drudge every drop of blackened blood from the pencil. However, when she sets the page back, those gaunt eyes meet mine. I see in them only the glimpse of hollow sockets, the milky cloud that overtook the eyes upon death.
Stupid pupil, I curse again. They stare back at me with mocking insatiability. The eyes are meant to be the first to decompose, yet mine never close. They scorn and ridicule me, the eyes of paper people glowering up at me with the privilege of peace. It was what the dead close on, finally. I imagine them shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
These paper people! These paper people are the final chords of a song left to fade out into white noise until the heavenly listener was once again blessed with unearthly silence. And yet they are carved in that bloody pencil. The hue is too red; it hurts me. Even through the stained paper, I could hear the color breathe. The redness speaks to my wounds; the paper people consume my oxygen. Between the eyes of those papery cowls, I wanted to efface myself, to asphyxiate in the shadows once more and forget, even if momentarily, the wounds I carry.
As the creature rises to leave, I finally breathe. Contempt to remain within the familiarity of my prison cell, I grab the fiery tips of the wrought iron spears as their barricade dissolves to let the living through. Continuing down the road, she whistled that unknown tune, twirling that red dagger between her fingers, until she disappears in the virulent fire. I feel a familiar cold creep up upon my toes, snagging and eddying as the rush of the river current rises again around me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, and comes from a country far away as health.
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